In the early days of digitalization, people dreamed that work would be replaced by play. Walter Benjamin said that capitalism represents the first case of a cult that is not sacrificial but puts us into debt. The Squid Game represents a central aspect of capitalism in an extreme form. the characters are in debt and agree to play this deadly game that promises them huge winnings. The recent Korean Netflix show Squid Game points in this direction.Ī. Total domination arrives when society is only engaged in play.
#BRAVE NEW WORLD BOOK ENTERTAINMENT QUOTES ABOUT GAMES FREE#
People are kept happy with free food and entertainment. In Panem et circenses, Juvenal refers to a Roman society where political action is not possible. Will the human future consist of basic income and computer games? That’s a discouraging outlook.
Digitalization will lead to mass unemployment, and that will represent a very serious problem in the future. I have talked about digital unemployment. But given the precariousness of the job market, will we all be able to access that lifestyle?Ī. Your book states that in a digital world we will become “ homo ludens,” focused on play rather than work. “In Orwell’s ‘1984’ society knew it was being dominated. When time loses its structure, depression sets in. The pandemic has destroyed these temporal structures. It lives off the stimulus of surprise, and of immersing us in a whirlwind of news. It produces and processes information, and information gives us the opposite of peace of mind. Nowadays, that is often obscured by information. These things are a support structure that provides peace of mind in life. In this world you describe, one of hyper-consumption where relationships are lost, why is it important to have objects that we love, and to establish rituals?Ī. Today we are obsessed not with things, but with information and data, that is to say, non-things. However, these are disposable objects that we cannot really bond with. There is without a doubt a hyperinflation of objects, meaning they are everywhere. How is it possible that in a world obsessed with hyperproduction and hyperconsumption, at the same time objects are disappearing and we are moving toward a world of non-things?Īnswer. Byung-Chul Han in a film still from the documentary ‘The Burnout Society: Byung-Chul Han in Seoul and Berlin.’īyung-Chul Han conducted this interview with EL PAÍS by email in German, which has subsequently been translated and edited for clarity.
We become lost individuals, in sick and cruel societies. He despairs of “the disappearance of rituals,” which also makes entire communities disappear along with them.
The philosopher strives to recover intimate contact in everyday life – he is known for his interest in gardening, making things with his hands and sitting in silence. This narcissism runs riot on social media, he believes, where the obsession with oneself makes others disappear and the world becomes a simple reflection of us as individuals. He has also considered new forms of entertainment and “psychopolitics,” where citizens surrender meekly to the seduction of the system, along with the disappearance of eroticism, which Han blames on current trends for narcissism and exhibitionism. The best-selling thinker, sometimes referred to as a rockstar philosopher, is still meticulously dissecting the anxieties produced by neoliberal capitalism.īy combining quotations from great philosophers and elements of popular culture, Han’s latest book Undinge (or Nonobjects), which is yet to be published in English, analyzes our “burnout society,” in which we live exhausted and depressed by the unavoidable demands of existence. While the digital world is increasingly blurred with what we still consider the “real” world, our existence is ever more intangible and fleeting, he believes. We continue to desire these non-things, and even to buy and sell them, Han says. The material world of atoms and molecules, of things we can touch and smell, is dissolving away into a world of non-things, according to the South Korean-born Swiss-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han.
0 kommentar(er)
